Stickers!

It is always amazing to me what a little piece of sticky paper can do to help make someone feel better. In my office we give many stickers away for kids who are brave (or not) during their shots. Kids who are good while their siblings are being seen. Occasionally, I have given stickers to my favorite Down Syndrome patient because she likes them almost as much as chocolate which I don't always have on hand.

I have denied stickers as well. For the kid whose mom wanted him to have a sticker even though he refused to listen or follow through on any of her requests, I said "no".

I like stickers myself and actually had many a sticker book in elementary and even middle school of various shapes, color, puffiness and smell. We had to stop getting the scratch and sniff ones because my staff and I would scratch all the smell out of them before they were a day old.

I am often looking through our collection commenting on the stickers we should be purchasing. "We need some princess stickers", I would say and be more excited than the kids when they arrived.

But by far my favorite sticker memory will be today.

An 80 year old man cut his forearm with a rusty nail on a birdhouse. Not much damage done but who knows when the last tetanus shot was so he came in to satisfy his wife. He didn't move an inch and complimented my medical assistant on her injection savvy. "You did great! I didn't feel a thing!"

I was telling his wife that earlier that day a mom had promised ice cream to her child when he only barely jerked his arm completely out of the way when he was getting his shot. I suggested maybe her husband could use an ice cream on the way home and we giggled.

Then I turned to the husband and asked if he would like a sticker. "Oh, sure!"

Let's see what we have........Superman, Madagascar, Shark Tales, Horses, Dogs, My Little Ponies.....

"Yup, that's the one!"

And he walked away with a beautiful purple My Little Pony sticker - his badge of honor for his tetanus shot and bird house adventure.